Artist List 2008 Grantees Donate Now Return to RHM Foundation Home

Click large image to advance to next image

Matt Sheridan Smith
Reference and remanence (what remains of) 2009 Digital wallet-sized prints 2 parts, each 7 x 5 inches
In my work I attempt to parse out the relationships between content, context, authorial control, and prescribed form. I am primarily interested in how circumscribing notions of content and intention can reveal dynamics in the structures (contextual, rhetorical, formal) that generate and distribute meaning. My practice often revolves around internal or random processes that seemingly produce their own content, or else let "external" conditions delimit, reconfigure, or even negate any implicit or intended meaning.

Strategies to this end include the use of generative forms, standards and formats as a stand-in for artistic agency, the reassessment of the readymade as aesthetic category, and the use of content, processes, and materials that problematize authorship.